This application claims priority based on Patent Application No. 2005-146926 filed in Japan on May 19, 2005 under Article 119(a) of the U.S. Patent Act. Its entire contents are incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to an interface for selectively pointing a plurality of icons, etc. on screen.
Conventional interfaces of this type include interfaces, in which a plurality of icons are arranged and displayed on the screen of a display device and the functions of application software etc. corresponding to the icons are activated, for instance, by selecting and pointing the desired icons with the help of a pointing device.
Incidentally, in case of a small screen, multiple icons had to be arranged without gaps, which caused icon visibility to deteriorate and made the operation of the icon selection more difficult.
For this reason, for instance, in Japanese Laid-Open Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-182871 (hereinafter called “Patent Document 1”), both icons and input control portions (buttons, check boxes, etc.) are displayed on screen, thereby efficiently utilizing screen real estate.
Moreover, in Japanese Laid-Open Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H11-102277 (hereinafter called “Patent Document 2”), a polygon is displayed on screen, with at least one icon positioned on each side of the polygon and the polygon rotated through multiples of 90° by operating a pointing device to display the icons on each side of the polygon in succession, thereby achieving an improvement in terms of ease of use.
However, as described in Patent Document 1, when the number of icons or input control portions increased, the icons or the input control portions had to be reduced in size, which diminished their visibility and operability.
Moreover, because in Patent Document 2 the polygon was rotated through multiples of 90 degrees by operating a pointing device, viewing all the sides of the polygon required multiple operations. In addition, certain operations were required for returning to the desired side after viewing all the sides of the polygon. As a result, operating the pointing device was a complicated task.
Accordingly, the present invention was made with account taken of the problems that existed in the past, and it is an object of the invention to provide an interface which, while being simple to operate, makes it possible to successively display a plurality of icons etc. and to select and point the icons, etc.